Monday, 23 January 2017

In his inaugural address, President Trump bragged that he was leading "a historic movement the likes of which the world has never seen before." Turns out he helped spawn two of them.

On Friday, a legion of Americans cheered Trump as a refreshingly pugnacious leader elected with a promise to shake the regular order in a country they say has gotten off on the wrong track. On Saturday, a multitude of Americans demonstrated against the new president for policies and rhetoric they see as misogynist and dangerous.

Elections are by definition divisive, of course, and Trump takes control of the White House at a time politics have become increasingly polarized. But historians struggle to cite a precedent for a new president who is both beneficiary and target of such powerful and rising grass-roots movements.

At stake are clashing visions of America on everything from the role of women and the impact of immigration to how the United States should engage with the world.

"It's hard for anyone to say when we're at a pivotal point, but I think these may be seismic shifts," Timothy Naftali, an historian at New York University and the founding director of the Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum, said in an interview. "We thought there was an era of new politics because of the role Trump played in the Republican Party, but the new politics may not just be of the right. We may be seeing a new politics in the center and the left."